


Hiraeth

by ghostbandaids



Category: Dream Team - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: #like a disney movie, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bad is a friendly carpenter, Blood and Injury, DNF, Dead Parents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Aid, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minecraft, Protective Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Royal!George, Sapnap is very oc, Slow build Dream/George, Swordfighting, but I'm working on the characterization, hopefully it makes sense, it's minecraft but real life, kinda ocs behind cardboard cutouts, sorry - Freeform, there's kingdoms and stuff, this is self indulgent, un-betaed, what are tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27860318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbandaids/pseuds/ghostbandaids
Summary: Dream is fine being alone, defending his tiny village from monsters and keeping his sword sharp with constant vigilance. He's held a secret for ten years, and he doesn't plan to reveal it any time soon. He tries to ignore the rumors of the New King.His life is monotonous and almost peaceful until George stumbles into the village, horde in tow, and forces him to make a choice: face his past or leave it behind forever.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 151





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi ya'll, this is the first fanfic/longer narrative that I've written so I'm just trying some stuff out! It's a realistic Minecraft AU which means that the world retains most of the mechanics of Minecraft (including the monsters!). Keep in mind that I'm focusing more on improving my storytelling than creating a romance novel, so while this will eventually include a relationship between Dream and George, I don't see it as the main focus of the fic. 
> 
> Disclaimer 1: I'm shipping the online personas of George and Dream, but it'll be taken down if I ever hear that they've expressed discomfort with content like this.
> 
> 2: I'm new to the Dream SMP fandom so I might use some of the lore, but no promises that it'll connect into the SMP correctly. Feel free to give constructive criticism on this (or any part of the story, really).
> 
> Enjoy!

He was fine being alone, really. He was used to it. Of course, there were the nights when he laid awake, things growling and calling in the night close enough that it made it hard for him to fall asleep. Then, the bed felt empty and far too cold. He never slept much at night though. He was busy. 

When he came to the village years ago, they didn’t ask questions about why he was alone or so good at fighting. In fact, when they heard of his skill with a sword, they only asked one question: if he wanted to protect them. He said yes. It was a small village, manageable. At sunset, he dragged the portcullis chain, closed them all in, and climbed the wall. Besides the occasional ambitious, wall-climbing spider, his work consisted of hitting and killing things from above. He thought was a bit cruel, the fact that they didn’t even understand what was hurting them. Occasionally, he went down and gave them a chance to fight. They always lost. 

He went through his fighting routine _(lunge, parry, riposte, remise, repeat)_ when he woke up and before he went to sleep; the carpenter was one of the few people he’d hold a full conversation with, due to the number of times he’d delivered his fighting dummy for repair.

He’d tried to get the villagers to explain how they’d survived before he showed up. For as much time as they devoted trying to be friendly with him, it was a question that they never fully answered. The carpenter told him that the wall was new, that they’d barely finished when he arrived. The widow told him that it didn’t used to be this bad -- that spiders didn’t grow as large as dogs, that the dead didn’t come back -- but occurrences like this had always been commonplace to him. He understood then that where he was from, the monsters were from too, birthed by the same land. 

He could see an old graveyard from the wall, but the villagers didn’t bury their dead; they burned them. 

The people were kind but he’d learned not to get attached. He knew better than that by now. He wondered why they trusted him. After all, they’d never seen his face. 

He wore a mask. White clay, circular, expressionless. They’d asked why he wouldn’t take it off. He’d asked how bad they wanted protection, how much trust they would put in a faceless man. They stopped asking after that. 

The adults, that was. The children held a strange fascination with him, crowding around him on the rare occurrence that he left his home during the day. They made him flower crowns because he never told them to stop. He had a soft spot for children and their unwavering hope. One boy told him that he was their dream-come-true, that his mama didn’t cry at night anymore because she knew they were safe now. He’d never told them his name. After the children started calling him that, the adults followed suit. His name was Dream. He tried to forget the days when people called him anything else. 

Once, a toddler came up to him with a draw-stick of charcoal and mud. He stood still as she drew a shaky, smiling face onto his mask. Of course, he could have washed it off. The rain had done it for him a couple of times afterward. He liked it though, redrew it when it started to fade. He didn’t need his mask to strike fear anyway, just his hands, holding a sword. 

Tonight wouldn’t be any different than the next or the one before it. He prepared to the sounds of the village going to sleep, the people returning their livestock for the day and shuttering their doors and windows. 

Ever-cautious, he picked up his shield along with his sword. It was diamond. That was another reason the villagers didn’t press him when it came to seeing his face or knowing where he came from. You don’t lose a protector with a diamond sword. Finished polishing the edge of it religiously, he slipped quietly out the door. 

Some of the townspeople smiled at him as he walked through town, their glances almost reverent. If they knew who he was -- no. He does what he can. Sometimes though, being seen as inhuman made him feel like the monstrous things he defended them from. It couldn’t be helped. He sighed, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and climbed. 

The night was quiet at first. Then, he heard the sounds of things headed his way, drawn to the concentration of life in the village like moths to the flame. Spiders, trapped by the spikes he placed at the top of the wall, hissed at him while he walked by. They weren’t so bad, he thought. They were just big insects _(really big insects)_. 

The worst thing about the dark was the undead, the ones with rotting skin or no skin at all. Some sounded almost human, others just rattled. He’d killed so many of them that he thought maybe, just maybe, he’d see a familiar face among the dead someday. He tried not to look at the barely-intact faces. He tried not to think about it at all. 

Skeletons were the worst. Armed with bows and arrows, _(from god knows where -- someone had to be giving them these right?)_ they posed a real danger to his village the day that they decided to shoot over the wall. Of course, a real arrow didn’t pose much of a threat to the clay and wood houses inside. No, what concerned him was that lately, he’d seen skeletons with strange, shimmering bows, the kind that he knew would manage to light a fire wherever the arrow fell. In order to stop them, their bones had to be knocked apart, their skull crushed. He did this before focusing on anything else, without hesitation. 

His night went off without a hitch. When he saw that the sun was almost ready to peek over the horizon, it was time to finish off the monsters that the sunlight wouldn’t kill. He didn’t want anyone endangered when villagers opened the gate and brought out the herds. 

It seemed like there were more every night, crowding in to fight him. He could handle it. He just remembered the nights years ago when they came in single digits. Now, they came in hordes.

He rolled his shoulders and unsheathed his sword while climbing down the wall to the waiting crowd of reaching hands and legs. His mind itched for a fight, his shoulders for the aching feeling that consumed everything else. 

He hacked at the spiders until they collapsed. To kill the undead, he had to cut clean through the neck. Sometimes, they moved almost like sword fighters. He used to give the ones with those fluid movement sticks. He would walk up to them; they would reach towards him and instead of himself, they would touch the staff he’d pulled out of the underbrush. Some grasped it. He swore that once or twice, the cloudy look in their eyes faded and they looked sad, lonely. He stopped trying to arm them years ago. Nobody benefited from it in the end. 

He cut through them as gently as he could. 

The creepers were by far the most unnerving. People claimed them the most monstrous as well, but he’d seen them at close-range enough times to notice the way that the four stubby legs moved into the familiar shape of a torso before the neck attached to a desiccated, skull-like head. 

It wasn’t their appearance alone that scared people. It was the fact that a single creeper could open a gaping hole in the wall, exposing them all. Getting too close to them meant almost certain death; their hissing came too late to give warning. 

Thankfully, there were few near the village that Dream guarded. He rarely saw them at night. The villagers knew to keep their distance if they saw one during the day, and children that watched the herds knew to come and get him if they needed his protection. Creepers were one of the only things he struggled to kill with his sword. Most of the time, he taunted them and led them away from the pastures, far enough that when they finally exploded, no one got hurt.

He whirled through the inky darkness, slashing through necks of the undead and bones of the skeletons. 

One of the undead lurched towards him holding a heavy sword. He lunged towards it, jabbing through its chest and pulling back before it could react. Like a battering ram, it charged forward. No one had taught it how to swordfight (or, if they had, it didn’t remember). He danced around the blade, conforming to the fluidity of a waltz he’d learned long before he started fighting. 

Like the others, he slashed through its neck and watched it drop to the ground, the sword still clenched in its ragged fist. 

The flutter of wings behind him was startling for a moment. Up on the wall-edge sat a single magpie, head cocked, looking straight at him. Six more coasted down from the clouds and settled down next to the first. 

They sat there, staring inquisitively, for the rest of the night, as he felled monster after monster. They didn’t seem to be scared by the crash of bodies through the underbrush and the thumps they made while falling. They watched until the sun rose.

One by one, they spread their wings and flew away, leaving only the bird in the middle. He swore that it was the one that had landed first. It pulled a mite out of a feather and threw it up in the air to swallow it, its eyes never leaving Dream's.

It pushed off the wall and was picked up by an under-draft of wind, carried in the direction of the rising sun.

He wiped his sword on his cloak. Some of the corpses strewn around him would light like torches when the sun rose. Others would have to be burned. He dragged them into a pile next to the gate. It was best to finish this step before the village woke up.

For him, the sound of morning was the gate dropping and the cheery voice of Bad, the carpenter yelling out a greeting. Next came the chopping of an ax, a building roar of the fire. He didn’t ever ask for help, but he appreciated what Bad did, despite the fact that he’d never vocalized it. 

“Looks like you had a busy night, Dream!”

He shrugged and started to pull the things towards the fire. Ever since the day he arrived, Bad had been there, trying to make himself helpful. It was endearing; Dream told himself that he wasn’t there to make friends. He was there to keep everyone safe. 

They stared at the flames until the bones were charred and surrounded by dust. Once they’d burned completely, Dream turned to head into the village. For a second, he almost thanked Bad. Seeing the carnage, day after day, it couldn't be easy for someone so soft-hearted (the mere use of a cuss word brought out reprimand from him). 

In the beginning, Bad had covered his face and turned away when the smoke from the corpses rose. These days, they stood in quiet solidarity, one of the only times that a steady stream of words wasn’t exiting Bad’s mouth. He reminded himself that he didn’t ask for help. Behind him, Bad sighed and started to greet the early-risers leaving their homes. 

“Come get me if you need help,” Dream said before walking away.

“Sure,” Bad said, “Come get me when you’re ready for your third dummy replacement of the week!”

Dream wondered how Bad managed to hold onto so much happiness, living in this world.

He went through his practice routine. _(advance, draw cut, balestra, lunge)_ , polished his sword, tucked it next to his pillow -- a habit formed early in life -- and climbed into bed. He didn’t have to wait long for sleep to carry him away. 

He knew he was still asleep when he opened his eyes and saw Sap. Every night, he dreaded the thought of returning here, seeing him.

They were surrounded by tall trees, the kind with aspirations to touch the sky. Sap was looking up at the stars. Dream walked over and joined him, staring up silently. When they were kids, the torches of the city made it too bright to see anything but the moon in the sky.

Finally, they looked at each other.

He wished that he could change the past, that Sap would grow up along with him. Dream looked 10 years older, but Sap’s face never changed. Night after night, it was the same. Innocent, hopeful. Back then, they both were. 

It was so hard to tell whether Sap was real or not. He remembered what they talked about, he knew what happened to Dream when he was awake. Maybe he was trapped as a ghost forever.

_(if people came back from the dead, if skeletons and creepers walked the Earth, then maybe Sap was really here, a remnant of his past self)_

Sometimes he made predictions. They almost always came true. Dream brushed them off as some sort of subconscious luck until Sap told Dream that a monster was inside the village, that they had to stop talking so Dream could wake up. When he dashed down the cobblestone path, wearing only a thin tunic and his mask, he saw a creeper careening through the rows of houses. He didn’t like to think about what might have happened that night if Sap hadn’t warned him. 

Maybe Dream was going crazy

“You’re back again,” Sap said. 

“It seems you’ll never get rid of me,” Dream replied. 

“You would miss me if I was really gone, wouldn’t you?”

“I do, Sap. You are gone.”

“Look. Cygnus is back too, see it up there?”

It took some time before he found the right group of stars. Sap was convinced that it looked like a swan. Dream thought that a bow and arrow would be a better description. He said that humans wanted to find familiar shapes in the sky, that all of the stars were just suns burning towards their own destruction. Sap told him that he was far too cynical.

“Each constellation has a story. Cygnus is no different,” Sap looked at him, really looked at him. Dream wished that he could wake up, stop seeing that face. “They say that there were once two gods racing in the sky, Dream, going so fast that they didn’t see the sun in time to stop. Their chariots melted and they fell to Earth, one landing in a tree and the other in a riverbottom, unconscious. From the tree, the man begged for a chance to save his friend; his wish was granted. He turned into a swan powerful enough to dive down and pull his friend from the depths. He succeeded, but they could never see each other again. The swan was placed in the sky because of his bravery.” 

“Maybe if we’d just looked ahead, we might have seen it coming,” Dream said softly. “The sun, that is.”

“Something that large is hard to avoid.” Sap replied. 

“I’ll never be able to repay you, Sap. How is that fair?” Dream told himself not to cry. He didn’t cry anymore. “It’s not fair that you got to be the brave one and leave me to run.”

“You should know exactly how fair life is,” Sap said. He sighed. “A change is coming. Have you seen it?”

“Yes.” Dream frowned. The monsters came more often, they attacked harder each night. Where once they had no weapons, they now carried swords and wore armor. He thought of the flaming arrow of the skeleton. 

“You’ll have to make a choice. It’ll only get worse from here. You could make a difference, do what we could never accomplish,” Sap said. 

“Remember what you told me, all those years ago? You told me to never look back, Sap. Run and never return. This sounds an awful lot like a full about-face.”

“You say that you don’t care about the villagers but you can’t lie to me. Is it worth losing them?”

Dream thought of Bad, of the children and the acceptance he felt from them -- people who didn’t even know what he looked like. He told himself after Sap that no one would ever die because of him. So far, no one had. He’d saved them. 

“The time will come. You’ll have to make a choice.”

“How will I know?” he asked, wondering if he could even make himself return, if anything would be worth it. His hands shook.

“You will know, Dream. When it’s time, you’ll know.”

“What’s the right choice? I’ve been running all of my life. I don’t know any other way.”

“I can’t make it for you.” 

Dream sat down in the grass and pulled out his sword. Sap’s face reflected in it, looking down at him. Here, the sun was about to rise. It was almost time to go back, fight for another long night. 

“I wish I could change things. I would die a hundred times if it meant you got a chance at life. I hope you know that.”

“I do,” Sap said. “But it’s too late. You can make the difference for both of us, if you want to.”

“Goodbye, Sapnap.”

“Until next time, Dream.”

He woke with tears running down his face and wiped them off. He didn’t cry. For Sap, for all of the villagers, he would make the right choice when the time came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm a high school student so I won't have the most consistent update schedule but I do have a plan for this fic and it won't be abandoned.
> 
> If you're curious about the magpies, check out the One for Sorrow nursery rhyme online. I remember hearing it when I was a kid.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream enlists Bad in protecting the village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning to wait and post this later, but I realized that it might be nice to release these chapters close together since they're more of an introduction than part of the storyline.

Before sunset, he went to talk to Bad. Above the small group of houses and torch-lit paths, the sun was about to dip below the horizon and the stars were poised to take their places in the sky. 

He found him in the workshop, sanding the last rough edges of a new crib. He’d already painted swirling white and pink flowers down the edges. 

“Muffins!” he muttered to himself, a small dent on the edge refusing to desist. 

“It’s perfect, Bad,” He didn’t mean to scare him, but Bad jumped back, wielding the sandpaper as if it presented an opponent to Dream. It made what he was about to ask feel even more ridiculous.

“Will you come up on the wall with me tonight?” 

“I’m not much of a fighter, you know,” Bad replied. “Is something wrong? You’ve never asked for help before.”

“I thought that you might like it. I feel like you don't ask about it as much but when I first came, you always wanted to help me,” Dream lied. Bad used to ask all the time. ( _that was before he helped burn the dismembered corpses, the crushed bones)._ Dream never said yes. 

"I don't know Dream ... I’m going to be losing some beauty sleep for this.”

“I’ll bargain for it. Want me to build some fences for you?” As the only carpenter, Bad was always tasked with the repair work and building jobs that no one else wanted to do. Dream swore that sometimes, Bad's complaints about another damaged gate drifted in through his window and woke him up.

“Fine.” He acted annoyed but the grin on his face told otherwise. “I’m going to finish this. See you in a bit!”

“See you.”

Dream trudged back to his house to grab his sword and an extra. Not that he was listening to the possibly-prophetic ghost of his best friend _(stop laughing, Sap)_ , but he couldn't abandon the villagers without defense if he had to leave. He needed someone that could stay and watch over them. He only hoped that he had enough time to get Bad ready. 

“... now to really make the best pie, and I mean the BEST pie, you have to really put your heart into it. Maybe even sing to it while it’s cooking. You know what I mean?” Bad asked. Dream nodded distractedly as if he’d baked something during his lifetime.

_(he hadn’t, by the way)_

Rustling from the leaves below alerted him to the fact that they weren’t alone. 

“You can never let yourself be caught off guard,” he said. Bad glanced up questioningly and Dream knew that he hadn’t heard anything at all. 

“Look down.” 

Below them, a zombie tumbled out of the bush, armed. Dream jumped down and killed it with a single, vicious slash to the neck before it even saw him.

“Never put yourself at a disadvantage. If you’re not listening for them, then they’re listening to you,” Dream said, sheathing his sword and rejoining Bad, whose eyes betrayed his shock.

“Just like that, huh?” Bad said softly, looking at it with the pity of a hunter on slaughtered prey, “It’s gone.”

“It’s gone.” Dream said back. “One less danger to the village.”

That night, Bad stood on the wood battlement and watched Dream fight. He whirled through the air, like a terrible, terrible dancer, seeming to hang suspended above the carnage he caused. If it was a dance, it was the kind that Bad couldn’t bear to look away from, lest a misstep gave the advantage to the zombie, the creeper, whatever thing Dream was fighting in that moment. He didn’t make a single mistake.

Dream sent him back after a couple of hours. He didn’t make him help.

“In the morning, I’ll come to build fences for you. Tell me then, if you want to learn how to fight.” Dream said to Bad’s retreating figure. 

He wondered whether forcing the choice on Bad was right. Wasn’t protection his duty? Making Bad watch him fight felt twisted when he thought about it for too long. They’d made him watch fights as a child. It disgusted him.

He went to bed that night and opened his eyes to Sap.

“You’ve stained his hands with blood,” Sap sighed. He didn’t wait for Dream to speak this time.

“He didn’t even raise a sword.” He tried to defend himself. It was this or leave the village with no one to guard it. There were too many children, too many caregivers and elders. Not enough people to watch over them.

“He won’t forget what he saw tonight.”

“I know,” Dream said.

“It’s too late for regret. Use him.”

“It’s his choice.”

“You’ve practically made it for him. Just try to be gentle.”

“Goodbye, Sap.” 

He rolled out of bed and splashed some water on his face, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes. The string of the mask slipped in his cold fingers before he finally managed to tie the thing onto his face. 

The sun hurt his eyes when he left his room, feeling like some sort of cave-recluse who was only used to brooding at night. The sky was blue with wisps of clouds and the grass swayed in a gentle back-and-forth motion. Out past the wall, he heard farmers calling to each other and children singing as they ran between herds, surveying their livestock. 

Bad seemed a foil to the perfect day outside. He looked tired. The bags underneath his eyes were a smudged purple, and his hands were raw and red as if he’d washed them one too many times. 

“I’ve never felt as weak as I did, watching that and realizing that I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help you if you needed it,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have put that on you. Sorry.” 

“The thing is, you don’t act without reason. You’ve done this for years without help so I know you had one when you asked me to come.” 

Dream walked into the room and picked up a frame, pretending to be interested in the intricate whorls carved down the sides. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t like to lie. 

“So if I don’t do this, are we going to be in danger? Are you going to disappear one day and leave the responsibility of keeping everyone alive to me?” Bad grabbed a hammer that was hanging from the wall and went back to assembling what looked like a shelf, hitting a little harder than was probably necessary. He was waiting for Dream to speak. 

There was a tense silence that the sounds outside failed to fill, interrupted by the staccato pounding of Bad’s hammer. He kept hitting the same spot as if he didn’t notice that the nail was through the wood completely and digging into the table below.

“Do you want to know where I’m from?” Dream asked flatly. Bad froze and looked up. No one knew where Dream was from. They didn’t know anything about him. 

“I’m from the North, far North. It’s cold there.” 

Memories seemed to flash by like vignettes. He remembered watching the snowflakes fall outside a frosted window, writing with his fingertips while his mother made hot cocoa. Stumbling out of the house to build snowmen and have snowball fights. Hiking up the edge of the mountain to sled back down in a fraction of the time and breathing out huge puffs of air that created clouds around him. He remembered smiling. He used to smile often, even when his face was so cold that it hurt to move his lips.

“Do you know who else is from the North?” 

Bad didn’t say anything for a long time. Dream thought about sledding down that snowy hill with Sap. It felt like flying, like nothing would ever be able to touch them. 

“The New King,” Bad broke the silence. Dream nodded. 

“Did you know him? Did you fight for him?” Bad looked almost betrayed.

Dream winced. He felt a hot iron burning his skin and marring his face. “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Dream?” Bad sounded concerned and Dream realized that the mask covered the pain on his face but didn’t hide it in his voice. 

“The New King hates villages like this, hidden in the forest, avoiding his taxes, not quite worth spending the money and time to locate. He won’t stop sending monsters until they’re all destroyed,” he said to change the subject. it was what they needed to talk about anyway.

“We’ve done alright so far. They’ve never even managed to hurt you.”

It was a half-truth, what he planned to say next. He trusted Sap’s judgment but talking about that would sound like the ranting of an unhinged man.

“At some point, there will be too many. If I leave soon, deal with this, you'll be able to handle them until it’s over. If I wait too long, I’ll struggle more and more each night. Eventually, even I won’t be able to kill all of them.” 

“You? Go against the king? This sounds a little lofty, dude.”

“I don’t want to worry people in the village, but regardless of my choice, we’ll be in danger” Dream said. “You know, where I grew up, there were monsters everywhere. To us, they were just like animals. We coexisted. I didn’t even realize until later that they were being created, that up until a decade ago, most people thought they were just folk tales. They can be stopped.”

“You’re really being serious aren’t you? Maybe we could talk to the city council. I know that they’ve evaded the royal messengers so far but it could all stop if we agreed to pay the tithe.” Bad’s voice squeaked, just a little.

“Paying the tithe means bleeding the village dry. There’s a reason the council’s avoided it. The New King doesn’t see these villages as valuable so he uses them for short-term gain, the tax is unsustainable.” Dream replied, setting down the delicate frame that had been clenched in his fist the entire time. 

“Then teach me to fight. You’re going to get yourself killed, though.”

“So be it.” Dream reached over Bad’s head to grab another hammer from the wall. “I think that I promised you some fences.”

They went out to the yard behind the shop, where the piles of wood rested in the grass. An old woman waved and smiled at them as they passed. 

Dream spent the morning hammering together pieces under the instruction of Bad, and the afternoon putting them together by himself, having successfully figured out all of the steps. He liked it, creating things with his hands rather than destroying them. He told himself that someday, he could build all the fences he wanted. Someday.

After that conversation, Bad came out to patrol with him for a couple of hours every night. 

“You should probably keep your focus on lunging forward and pulling back without getting hurt. With monsters, I don’t think that you’ll need to learn much else. Maybe some defensive footwork.” 

He drilled Bad; forced him to lurch forward, step backward with quick, delicate steps, over and over again. 

“If you control your movement and the distance between the opponent and yourself, then you control the fight. All you have to do is hit and move back before their attack.”

He gave Bad a wooden sword and played the part of a mindless opponent; monsters didn’t think strategically either. They just attacked vertically until someone managed to kill them. He showed Bad where to hit _(the neck, chest, legs)_.

“Lunges are for weakening them, you probably won’t kill them that way unless you hit a vital point. If you come from the side, you can catch them by surprise and dispose of them.”

Eventually, he decided that Bad had to face a monster. 

“Help! Dream! It just keeps coming straight at me!” Dream, standing a couple of feet away from them, laughed. That was the thing about the New King’s mobs. They didn’t really have survival skills despite their antagonistic nature.

“It’s their weakness! Either lunge at it or slash from the side. It doesn’t know how to avoid you and it won’t stop until one of you is down.”

Bad stopped leading the thing in circles and lunged. At the last minute, he dodged out of the undead’s reaching arms and curved his sword around from the back, slicing through the neck. It fell to the ground with a dull thump. 

He fell down on the ground next to it, panting. Dream rolled the thing over with his foot to make sure that it was fully dead this time. 

“Nice job.”

Bad looked up at him. “It didn’t feel like a very nice thing to do.”

“Someone had to do it.”

After that, he gave lots of the monsters to Bad. He showed him how to sidestep the mouths of spiders at the last minute so that the webs they spewed out would miss, how to hit a creeper and run. There wasn’t much to explain about that one. He still handled the more dangerous monsters, but he thought that Bad would be alright if he had to leave. Although he wasn't even close to Dream's fighting prowess, he was passable. 

Weeks later, Sap asked if Bad was ready.

“I think that he can do it"

“He'll have to. It’s time.” Sap answered. He turned away and refused to say anything else.

Dream woke to the suffocating feeling of foreboding. Most of the time, Sapnap was right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've made it through the expositional chapters! The ones following will start straight into the actual plot -- stay tuned!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream encounters George and a plethora of zombies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I try to write a fight scene but really just use the verb 'slash' and the noun 'sword' about one hundred times (doodoodoo)
> 
> CW for increased depiction/description of violence and injury which is likely to stay the norm for the duration of this work.

George told himself that he had to keep moving. It didn’t matter that one of the zombie-things’ knives had caught him in the leg, causing a searing pain with each step. It didn’t matter that it was getting harder to run, that he felt hollow and exhausted. He’d long ago given up the idea of escape. 

He stumbled on a tree root and caught himself on the rocky ground, shredding his hands on the gravel. He wiped them on his already-filthy pants. 

He had to keep moving. He could hear the rumbling horde behind him, growing larger every minute.

In the distance, he saw a village-light, among the trees. He turned to avoid it, running in the opposite direction. It was too late to seek shelter; he’d only get them killed. 

  
He had to keep moving.

  
-  


The wind rustled through the leaves, and their waxy tops shined under the light of the moon. 

Bad must have noticed that Dream constantly glanced over his shoulder, but neither of them said anything. These days, no one really needed an excuse for paranoia. 

The night seemed uncharacteristically calm. There was the occasional spider or wandering undead that he gave to Bad but no gatherings of the monsters that had become more common in the last couple of weeks. 

He told himself that he was ready for the change, whatever it might be. 

(if you asked him what he thought it might be, he wouldn’t have an answer)

He made Bad spar him. By the time they finished, they were both breathing heavily. Dream’s tunic stuck to his back with sweat, and he felt the chill of the night air against it. 

They waited an extra hour before Bad left. As he walked towards the village, he glanced back at Dream, the faintest trace of concern splashed across his face. 

  
Dream knew that something was off — there was no way the steady wave of monsters had slowed to a trickle overnight. They were sent to villages like his, so there would be no reason for them to change course unless they were targeting something else …

He was drawn out of his thoughts by an insidious feeling of unease. He realized that the leaves of the nearby trees were no longer blowing in the gentle wind. 

They were shaking. 

A vibration rose from the dirt and grass into his feet, a steady, growing rumble. It seemed to crescendo from the hills surrounding the village: footsteps--what sounded like hundreds of them, moving together. 

He drew into a defensive stance, his sword raised and his shield ready. The force trooping towards him couldn’t be one of the King’s platoons. At least, not an organized one. He knew what a marching brigade sounded like — in time, steady steps. This sounded like chaos. 

When the first shape burst through the bushes, he raised his sword to jab it through. He barely managed to abort the swing when he saw the face of the thing; it was strikingly human. No undead had ever shown a trace of fear. This man's eyes were full of it.

“Run,” he whispered. Then he careened forward and fell to the ground near to Dreams feet, facedown.

It was at that moment that he saw the matted minx hair around the man’s uniform collar. Only the New King clothed his army in fur, a remnant of his history with the cold. He should have listened, ran back to the village where the walls would keep him safe from whatever wave of monsters was about to crest. He had no obligation to keep one of the king's men, the very creator of his enemies, safe.

For some reason that he wouldn’t be able to explain when he thought about it later, he hesitated. Before Sap died, Dream saw the same look of paralyzed fear in his best friend’s eyes. 

His pause cost him the opportunity to make a decision; the dragging footsteps of the man’s pursuers manifested into a crowd of the undead, emerging from the trees

Roughly gripping the unconscious man’s _(god-awful)_ uniform, he dragged him into the crook of a tree where he would be easier to defend. There wasn’t much point in killing a person when there were monsters to deal with. 

An arrow thudded into a trunk near his head. He ran towards the twang of the bowstring, hacking his way towards the undead. He would face them head-on. 

The first wave reached the clearing, swarming into the open area. The moon glinted in their empty, cold eyes. 

He cut a sharp trajectory and flanked them, curving around their backsides before they had time to react. He stabbed the first from behind, his knife twisting and slipping into its neck socket. He was grateful that there was never any blood when it came to fighting things that were already dead. 

Vaulting over the body, he cut through the necks of two more corpses before hands grabbed him from behind, tearing into his shoulders. He flipped backward, dropping the thing to the ground before pushing the point of his sword through its chest. 

Crouched in the swaying grass at the edge of the clearing, he watched the next row of undead. They dragged themselves forward, heading not for him but for the man he’d propped against the trees. 

It would be an easy disposal, he thought. The monsters didn’t seem to want Dream. Then again, the fact that they were going for the New King’s knight at all made him think that maybe the man was worth helping. Maybe he’d deserted.

He ran at the group of undead, swinging his sword in a wide arc. It slid through the neck of the first and into the chest of the second. Drawing back, he lifted the diamond blade up to lunge at the third in the group when he realized that it too held a sword. 

He slid his blade along the edge of the undead’s corroded, metal blade, overcoming its sloppy grip with a quick twist of his wrist. The sword went flying up in the air before clattering down in the rocks behind them. 

He killed it and moved to attack the next group of undead, but his forward motion was interrupted by an arrow from the same spot in the trees. He cried out with the pain of its impact, almost falling to his knees. 

To his dismay, his green cloak had gone from clean to tattered to bloodstained in a matter of minutes, the wine-colored blotch spreading even as he glanced at it. He told himself that the arrow sticking out of his shoulder was far from fatal and broke off the exposed shaft. 

He found the skeleton in the trees and staggered towards it, thrusting his sword into its chest in a rare show of negligence. The sharp diamond met no resistance as it slid through the gap of the skeleton’s ribcage and out of the other end. He tried to balance by twisting his chest away from the monster but instead fell to the packed earth, his shoulder burning with excruciating pain.

_(if he screamed, no one heard it)_

He dimly registered the skeleton raising its bow. It was as if he was merely observing the scene rather than taking part in it, only realizing at the last second that he was about to be shot at point-blank range. He barely lifted his sword in time to block the arrow aimed at his heart. 

He exhaled, closed one eye, and threw the sword at the skeleton’s head. The instant the point connected with its eye socket, its skull shattered into a shower of bone fragments that rained to the forest floor. 

The fine white dust that shifted in the moonlight reminded him of snow. 

Gravel dug into his hand as he used his right arm to push himself from the ground, limping a couple of feet over to the remains of the skeleton and his sword. With it in his hand, he felt better. Only slightly though — the pain of his shoulder still consumed his mind. 

He knew that he would have to fall back to cover the man, still unconscious, at the edge of the treeline rather than taking whole groups of the undead at once. He no longer had the speed or strength to catch them off guard as they entered the clearing.

Even taking on one at a time, he felt his attacks grow sloppy with the loss of two-hand support. Pain pulsed from his shoulder with every move he made. The fact that the arrow had hit his left side rather than his right was lucky, but he’d lost the fluid momentum that he used as a base for most of his attacks. 

No matter how many reaching hands and heads he cut off, more took their place. Eventually, he would collapse and that would be the end. Maybe Bad would discover his body. More likely, there would be nothing left of him to find. 

Thinking felt like pushing through thick fog so he resorted to muscle memory. 

When he felt the bite of a sword against his own neck, he went limp. There was no way to defend himself; the flexibility that could have saved him had been stolen by the skeleton. He closed his eyes and knew that when he opened them next, it would be to Sap’s face. 

  
-

  
When George jolted awake and saw the armed zombie plodding towards the man he’d tried to warn earlier, he felt as though he should probably help. His entire body ached. As he pushed himself off the tree he’d been laid against, his vision doubled and swam in front of his eyes. He saw a sword resting in the grass near him, rusty and dented. With each step, he told himself that he was almost there, that couldn’t stop moving. 

He picked it up with two hands and ran towards the zombie, feeling as though the ground below him had chosen to taunt him by spinning. 

With a final stride forward, he stabbed the thing’s chest and flung both of them to the grass in a tumbling mess.

  
-

  
Fully expecting to die, Dream opened his eyes when he heard a loud thud. The knight had tackled the undead to the ground. As he watched, the man cut through its neck before smiling crookedly at Dream. He touched the fine line of blood on his own neck where the undead’s sword had rested moments ago.

At that moment, they were illuminated by a rosy glow, and Dream nearly cried in relief. He watched as the undead in the trees were enveloped by the rays of the sun and caught fire like dry logs added to a bonfire. 

In the sun, undead created their own funeral pyres. 

He glanced over at the knight to see if the New King’s man had plans to stab him as well when saw that the man was lying on the ground with his eyes were closed as if he’d fallen asleep _(again)_. He looked almost peaceful in the soft light. 

Dream sprawled next to him with his sword propped in his lap and allowed himself a moment of silence to watch the sunrise. Soon, Bad would open the gate and wonder where Dream was, why there were no corpses. The clouds glowed a vibrant red. 

  
He leaned over and shook the arm of the man, thinking about how he had another opportunity to kill him and wasn’t going to take it. He thought that it would be kind of rude given that the man had just saved his life. 

When he got no response, he tugged the man’s cloak off and threw it onto the burning remains of the undead, watched it succumb to the sparking flames. The New King liked to keep track of his knights. It was probably why the man had acquired such an entourage of undead. 

“You’re really going to make me carry you then?” Dream asked, exasperated. He didn’t think that he could support all of the man’s weight and was tempted to leave him behind. 

“I’m not that heavy,” the man mumbled without opening his eyes. 

Hearing his voice again gave Dream another reason to trust him. The accent that would have identified him as someone from the North (the way that Dream’s voice sounded) wasn’t there. Instead, Dream swore that the knight's voice seemed almost aristocratic like the voice of the Old King who he’d heard speak only once, years ago. Maybe he was delirious and imagining things. The other man certainly was — his forehead was hot to the touch, feverish. 

Dream wondered how long the man had been on his own, running because he knew he couldn’t win the fight against the horde. With his uniform drawing monsters to his location at night, the days would have only offered a short reprieve: a vicious cycle that tended to kill deserters in less than a week. 

He crouched next to the knight and pulled his arm over his tattered green cloak. They made quite a pair; the man was practically unconscious with a sword wound down his calf, Dream struggled to hold the man up with only one shoulder. The left side of his body felt like it was on fire. 

He had to constantly check it to convince himself that it wasn’t about to go up in flames.

He wasn’t sure whether it was self-preservation or stupidity that led his decision-making process, but he knew that if Bad found out about the man, the town council would follow. The only knights that they advocated for were dead ones. 

The fact that the village had evaded discovery since the New King’s rise to power was owed mostly to its isolated location. The other reason was that when the King's troops saw it, they never reported back.

Dream was expected to be the executioner. They trusted him to protect the village, and he did — but something in his chest told him that this man deserved to live. He heard Sap’s voice in his head telling him that it was time, that a change was coming. Was this the choice he had to make?

It wasn’t a hard one. He would keep the man alive. 

_(for now)_

“We have to walk now, okay?” he tried to sound encouraging though he felt inclined to pass out. The knight stumbled and Dream took slow, careful steps in an attempt to keep him on his feet. 

“My leg hurts,” the man whimpered, his body as hot as Dream’s shoulder felt. Dream hissed as the man’s head lolled and his feet collapsed underneath him, trying not to fall. He could barely support the weight of the smaller man. 

Up ahead, he could see the wall and a small ladder that connected to a pathway near his house. He told himself that all he had to do was climb the ladder, leave the knight in his house, and find Bad. 

The man’s wound wasn’t severe and Dream could bring back medicine for his fever, but he knew that every minute he went without getting a healing potion for his shoulder increased the chance of permanent damage. There was only so much a cleric could do. 

  
_climb the wall_

He shifted the man’s weight onto the ground to give himself a break as he stared up at the ladder rungs stretching up the wall. He sighed when he realized that he would have to get himself and the other man over it with one arm. Gripping the man’s shoulder, he shook it until he opened his eyes. The man looked dazed, his eyes unfocused like he was looking through Dream rather than at him.

“Listen,” he tried to sound commanding. “I need you to hold on to me. Don’t let go.” He positioned the man’s arms around his neck and felt them tighten. 

Dream stood up and pulled the man into his chest, wrapping his legs around his waist. He winced, cursing whoever had handed bows over to skeletons — it was as if half of the thoughts in his head were about the pain in his shoulder. The sharp sensation of moving it threatened to consume him.

He climbed the ladder by grabbing a rung and leaning into the wall, securing his feet on the rung below before reaching up to grab the next. It was a slow process, and sweat dripped underneath his mask. 

About halfway up, he felt the man’s arms starting to slip from his neck.

“Fuck.” he muttered. “Shit.” He couldn’t shake the man awake; his right arm was holding tight to the wood above them, his left threatening to fall off him just like the man. 

_(that was what it felt like at least)_

“Wake up!” he whispered into the man's ear, worried that someone would hear him if he yelled.

“Hurts…” the man whispered back in a pleading tone. 

“I know. It would hurt a lot worse to fall though,” he muttered, trying to climb faster and blinking the sweat out of his eyes. He felt the arms tighten once again and let out a quick sigh of relief. He could see the last rung above him and then he was heaving himself over the top of the wall.

_leave the knight_

He stumbled down the stairs on the other side, holding onto the man with his good arm. His vision shifted and blurred, but he managed to follow the grassy path and push open the door to his home. The bed creaked as he laid the man down on top of the crumpled blankets. 

He was unconscious again. Dream didn’t think that he would pose a danger even if he was alert. He grabbed his key and locked the door on his way out, only taking a couple of tries to line it up with the keyhole. 

_find Bad_

Bad was his friend. Bad would help him. All he really wanted to do was curl up in the grass and go to sleep, but he forced himself to chant it over and over again so he wouldn’t stop walking. _(find Bad, find Bad, find Bad)._

He trailed his fingertips along the logs of the village wall as he walked, telling himself that if he stopped now and didn’t heal his shoulder, he might not be able to fight again. He didn’t want to stop fighting: it was all he knew how to do. 

He looked up and realized that by some miracle he’d reached the main gate, saw Bad standing in the opening with a worried look on his face. It only grew in alarm when he glanced over and saw Dream, tattered and bloodstained.

“Dream?” 

He wanted to tell Bad that his shoulder was hurt. He was trying to remember what had caused it in the first place when he saw that the grass was tilting up to meet his face. 

That was when Dream finally collapsed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dream goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for George getting stitched up with a needle (not really graphic but the description of it is there).
> 
> I'd say that this chapter is more of an interlude since not much happens but I enjoyed writing it!

It was strange, Dream thought, to wake up without talking to Sap. The lingering idea of pain in his shoulder reminded him of the night before, that he’d more likely been unconscious than asleep.  
  
The contours of his mask dug into his cheek when he moved which was a relief, though a little surprising.

The muslin sheets of the cot -- it couldn’t be his, he slept with a pile of blankets -- rustled as he shifted. The cleric’s house then. He evened his breathing and feigned sleep, listening to the low murmur of voices and trying to ignore the familiar burn-tingle sensation of a healing potion almost finished.

Then he stopped faking. The sunlight from the window felt warm and comforting and before he realized it, he was asleep again. 

When he woke up for the second time, he forced himself to open his eyes. He could hear humming from one of the chairs near his cot; it was a miracle the cleric hadn’t yet kicked Bad out for disturbing the peace of her home.

He pushed himself up against the headboard, and his arm ached with the feeling of an over-exercised muscle rather than one shot with an arrow. 

The cleric -- her name was Willow -- heard him sit up and came bustling over from her apothecary counter before Bad even realized he was awake. She was short and welcoming, the gray hair surrounding her face reminiscent of a halo. The scent of lavender seemed to follow her and her hands were always stained by herb-cutting. 

She felt safe because she was always quiet, always kind. She cared for everyone in the village, though her treatment was worth more than what she charged, if she charged at all. She didn’t feel safe because in fleeting moments, she would wave while Dream was walking by and he would see his grandmother instead. And for a second, he would think that he was home, that the wind blowing through the trees was icy. And then he would blink. 

_(he missed his grandmother. he missed a lot of things)_

“If Bad had gotten you here any later,” she said with a hint of scolding and a lot of concern, “I’d be asking you how good you were at making maps.”

“Maybe I was just trying for early retirement,” he said with a smile in his voice to let her know he was joking. The cartographers wouldn’t have taken him either way; everyone knew that he was only good at fighting and too restless for anything else. 

She smiled, but the wrinkles around her eyes were more pronounced than he remembered. 

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, itching to walk home and stop thinking about the fact that he’d almost died. That was when he froze. After all, his normally-abandoned home wasn’t empty. It was occupied by the feverish man from the night before, the one he’d forgotten about until now. 

“How long have I been asleep?” he asked, trying to quell the panicked thoughts of a dead knight in his bed or an alive one loose in the village. 

“Since sunrise,” Bad said, a slight tremor in his voice. “It’s afternoon now.”

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that, Bad.”

“I couldn’t even carry you.” 

“You knew what to do. Look, I’m all healed up,” he said, flexing his muscles and trying to sound reassuring, though knew that the only reason he was alive was probably luck and sheer willpower.

Bad offered a weak smile. It was better than nothing. Dream would talk to him about it later.

“Am I alright to leave?” Dream asked. 

“Yes, but you can’t use that shoulder for a couple of nights. Any aggravation will counteract the potion,” Willow said, her eyes daring him to argue with her. She’d scolded him time and time again for going against her instructions, but he didn’t plan to argue today. Dealing with the mess he’d left behind in his house was bad enough -- besides, he had Bad to help him. 

He turned and faced Bad who was fidgeting with some small and wooden thing that he slipped into a pants-pocket when he saw Dream watching.

“Will you be alright for a couple of days by yourself?”

“Against the things that almost killed you last night? Let’s not overestimate my skill here,” Bad said bluntly.

Dream grimaced, thanking his mask for hiding his face. He didn’t know how to explain the horde without revealing what had been at the head of it. 

“There was some sort of draw on the monsters.” _(not a lie, he thought)_ “Whatever it was, I wiped enough that it’ll take a couple of days for their population to recover.” 

Bad’s forehead wrinkled. It was as if the confidence he’d gained in the last few weeks had been stolen when Dream collapsed in front of him.

“What happened last night won't happen again.” He glanced at Willow’s back theatrically before whispering, “And of course I can always help if you need it.” 

It was no use -- she glared at him and retrieved a handful of spiders’ eyes from a jar before returning to her brewing. He swore that the magic in her head sometimes leaked into her ears; her hearing was uncanny.

“Do you think that I’ll be alright?” Bad asked.

“Yes,” Dream said. And it was the truth. 

“Then I’ll do it.” Bad said.

Before Dream left, he asked Willow for a fever reduction potion, the kind that defended against infections. She stretched out a hand to feel his forehead before remembering his mask and drawing back as if she’d been shocked, perhaps worried that she’d insulted him. Even Willow -- who saw him bleed and knew he was human -- sometimes displayed her adoration.

She didn’t ask any questions about why he needed it after her slip-up. It only took a couple of minutes of convincing and reassurance that he wouldn’t collapse on the path before he was allowed to leave, sans Bad. 

Out of their sight, his head drooped, dragged by bone-tired weariness. He trudged home, wishing that he didn’t have to confront the problem of a man and knowing that he did at the same time.

On the porch he paused, listening for any hints of noise inside. Nothing. He dug into his pocket where the key remained, bloodstained from the night before. It was probably his blood, he thought absentmindedly. Or maybe the knights. He twisted it in the handle and took a deep breath before pushing the door open, ready to face whatever awaited him.   
It was rather anticlimactic to see that the man was still curled on the bed, the sheets clenched in his fists and the blankets in a crumpled pile on the floor. 

Though he tried to resist it, Dream felt a spike of concern. He leaned over and felt the man’s forehead -- the fever was unbroken. Fever reduction potions sometimes took days to work _(if they worked at all)_. He would have to take care of the man until the potion ran its course. 

It seemed almost pointless to keep an enemy alive. Was he an enemy? Dream wasn’t sure.

He rolled the knight onto his back and tipped his chin back, slowly pouring the pink-tinted potion down his throat and willing him to swallow it. He did.

Willow’s potions tasted like spring water and a soft summer breeze; Dream would know, it felt like he was constantly having to drink one. The cleric who’d served his platoon years ago had brewed potions that tasted like a brackish swamp regardless of their components, to the dismay of all.

 _(his grandmother told him that those who used magic couldn’t help but betray their intentions, their souls)_

He grabbed a washrag and dunked it into a water-basin on his small writing desk, twisting the water out before laying it on the man’s forehead. There wasn’t much else he could do; the potion would burn through him with the same ferocity of the fever. 

Reaching under the bed, he pulled out a box of bandages and healing salve, only wincing slightly when he twisted his shoulder. He pulled his chair to the side of the bed and sat down. Then he unsheathed his sword and used the tip to slowly cut away the man’s trouser leg until he could see the deep score in the man’s leg. 

The skin surrounding it had taken on an angry yellow tinge. Dream exhaled and slowly pressed a new cloth against the wound, knowing that stitching without cleaning it wouldn’t do any good. The man flinched and Dream froze, watching his face -- still asleep. After a moment of tense silence, he started again, trying to wipe the dirt out as gently as possible. 

When he’d cleaned it, he dropped the dirtied cloth on the floor and reached for the healing salve, deep green and surrounded by a haze of Willow’s magic. With some of the paste rolled in his fingers, he did his best to cover the edges of the cut, trusting that the potion would do the rest. 

He picked up a needle and a spool of spider-silk from the case at his feet, hesitating. Not that he doubted his own abilities -- he’d stitched himself up before. It was just that this was the most painful part.

Shadows of shifting leaves and sun fell through the window and onto his hands, which were twisting the thread around his fingers in what he would hate to admit was a show of uncertainty. 

That was when he glanced up and saw the deep brown eyes of the man watching him like a forest-doe. It was that fear again, the fear that had saved him when Dream first saw him in the forest. 

“Will it hurt?” he rasped, his voice gravelly with disuse. 

“Yes,” Dream replied. He threaded the needle and watched the man, wondering if he was going to try and run. 

The knight didn’t move. If Dream hadn’t been trained better, he might’ve only noticed the man’s stoic expression, but he saw a slight tremble in his jawline, a clenching of teeth. 

“What’s your name?”

“George,” the knight said. 

It was a royal name, George. Reserved for the line of the Old King who’d held the moniker himself. And the way the knight stated it -- so self-assured, confident. Few soldiers that served the New King were willing to admit they were named George. 

Dream dug around in the scrap box under his desk before tossing a scrap of leather onto the bed. George stared at him. 

“Bite down on that,” Dream said. “You asked if it was going to hurt. It is.” 

George almost looked offended by the order, picking up the leather-piece and looking it over with speculation. 

“It’s so the village doesn’t think I’m murdering someone in my house, dumbass.”

“Is that what you’re going to do? Kill me?” George asked, eyes fever-bright.

“We’ll see,” Dream said. “First we have to deal with this. Bite.” And George did.

Dream leaned into George’s leg and put his weight on the man’s knee. It wouldn’t help if he bolted halfway through. He tied a knot at the end of the silky thread and, without warning, pushed it into the skin near the top of the cut’s opening. 

Dream felt George's muscles tense underneath him, trying to pull away from the needle. A soft hiss escaped the man's mouth. Dream finished the first suture and started in on the next one, using his elbow as leverage to keep George from moving his leg

George took a ragged breath as Dream pushed the needle through the edge of the cut and let it out with a whimper as the thread was tugged through the other side.

“Almost done,” Dream muttered, mostly to himself. He tried to ignore the keening noises of the other man, going as fast as he could. 

Then George went limp and Dream sighed with relief. He’d passed out again. Dream finished the stitches in silence and wrapped George’s leg with a cotton bandage. 

Pushing himself out of the chair with his good shoulder, he gathered up the used rags and wrapped them in the blankets from the floor before lifting up the bundle and stepping outside. 

He walked slowly down the path to a nearby stream where he waded in up to his knees and methodically wrung the fabric out over and over again until the vestiges of its use were all but forgotten. 

Then he sat on the bank and listened to the birds in the trees, the people in the town center nearby bargaining on the price of eggs and hare-leg. The day was kind with the smell of autumn on the wind. Soon the rains would come, but today the sky was sunny and clear. 

He brushed the grass off himself and the damp bundle before walking back to hang the blankets on a rope between the trees near his house. 

After that, he got out a broom and swept out the entirety of his one-room cottage. It wasn’t that having someone in his bed made it slightly embarrassing to look at his desolate and dust-filled home _(besides the fact that it was definitely the reason he was cleaning)_. Having another person there forced him to consider how empty it was. He’d never felt the need to decorate and his most valuable possession was the sword he carried on his back anyway.

He knew it was a stupid thing to do but he went out on the porch and looked around for something that might make his house inhabited. Some wildflowers -- that could have been weeds, he couldn't tell -- were growing in the grass. He found a clay cup to put them in and carried them inside, setting them on his desk. 

He felt ridiculous, but the flowers were a deep blue and quite pretty so he let them be

Then he sat in the chair next to the bed and waited for George to wake up again. And waited. And waited. 

The man twisted and grimaced, never once opening his eyes. Dream was still thinking about why the soldier would have admitted to having a name like George -- quite a treasonous action, honestly -- when George started to cry, his body wracked by sobs. It was painful to watch a healing potion in action.

He hoped that the fever would break soon.

He bent over to check George’s temperature, but when he brushed the man’s hair back and felt his forehead, the knight quieted and leaned into his touch. He snatched his hand back and stood up, pacing the room. 

Sap always had nightmares when they were kids, and later in the barracks when they weren’t. He would always cry in his sleep, screaming for help, and Dream would climb up next to him in bed and hold onto his arm, reminding him that someone was there for him and calming him down. 

But George wasn’t Sap. No one replaced Sap. An enemy knight didn’t deserve comfort the way that Sap had. 

Then again, Sap had always wanted to help people. And George could be the change, the one that deserved Dream’s help. 

_(sometimes he wished that it was more convenient to consult his ghost best-friend)_

If anyone had asked Dream later, what he did next, he probably would have lied -- said that he went back to sharpening his sword. 

What he really did was run his fingers through George’s hair; it was soft and silky, unlike his own which had probably deserved washing along with the blankets. He told himself that it was because the crying was annoying and this was a solution. 

“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’ll be better soon. Just breathe.”

He would never admit that he felt a small wave of relief when George’s tears ceased. _(Sap would probably make fun of him for this later, he thought with resignation)_

And so he sat there, watching the sunset, waiting and waiting and waiting for the maybe-enemy of a knight to wake up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not Dream petting an enemy soldier sksksks (: anyway just watched him win the gamer Streamys award which is pretty cool! 
> 
> Thanks 4 reading! Fun fact: I go to a really small school, so there are more kudos on this fic than people in my grade and more hits than twice the amount of people in the entire school which is pretty crazy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George wakes up and talks to Dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo I kinda forgot about this fic for a while and then had an idea for their conversation which hopefully makes sense. for the record, I'm using names and personalities from the dreamsmp characters but the arcs on the smp aren't really going to match up with the plot in this fic. 
> 
> happy holidays to everyone!

George’s entire body hurt and waves of sharp pain radiated from his leg. Turning his head only a small amount to the side was exhausting. 

He wasn’t sure of what to do -- after all, he’d never had much of a plan. His memories of the last few days or maybe longer were hazy. He remembered trying to warn the man he saw in the forest, waking up to stab a zombie through the neck, sunlight on a sharp sewing needle. 

When he lifted his head to look, the wound he’d gotten on his leg was dressed and clean; maybe the man wouldn’t kill him after all. Maybe he was just healing him for interrogation or to sell to the king’s men at a higher price. After all, most villages served the New King these days. Though George wore the uniform, he couldn’t hope to emulate their behavior. Any questioning on that subject and he’d be found out. 

He realized that in his fever-haze, he’d introduced himself as George. Fuck. They’d told him to lie about that one. 

The room he was in was small, walled with wood planks, one side inset with a tiny window that let in light from the moon sliver outside. Its soft silver glow illuminated a cup of bright blue flowers sitting on the desk which was … unexpected.

Blue was George’s favorite color.

That was when he realized that shrouded by the shadows of the room and slumped in a chair next to his bed was the man from the forest, his hand resting next to George’s head on the pillow. In the chaos of the night before (though it could have been days for all he knew), he hadn’t really looked at the man before he collapsed. He was wearing a white mask, one with a crooked smiling face drawn on it. 

Interrogation it was; the man probably wanted to hide his face and emotions with the mask. It was strange though, that he’d let himself be so vulnerable by falling asleep. 

George thought for a minute that he might be able to escape if he really wanted to. Or kill the man -- he held a sword in his hands and George knew that diamond swords were rare these days but it almost looked like one. If he could somehow ignore the pounding dizziness in his head and climb past the man’s sentry position there might be a chance. The problem was that he didn’t really want to try. He was tired of running. 

He closed his eyes and hoped that his dreams would be more pleasant than his reality, still thinking of the blue flowers that sat on the desk. 

-

Dream hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Sitting next to George in the dark, he hadn’t even noticed that his eyes were closing until he was in the grass next to Sap instead. 

Reaching for his sword instinctively, he realized that he didn’t have it. After all, this was a dream. He stood up, unnerved at how easy it would be for George to kill him right now. 

“You just got here,” Sapnap grumbled. “Don’t tell me that you’re going to leave again when you haven’t had real sleep in days.”

“I’d rather not be killed while unconscious if that’s alright with you.”

“Are you scared of him?” Sap asked. 

“At this point, I don’t really know what to expect.”

“Does he seem like one of the New King’s soldiers to you?” 

It was an insightful question. Dream had been wondering the same thing. George’s name, accent, poise -- none of it seemed to indicate that he was interested in furthering the ruthless regime. 

“He wears the uniform,” Dream replied.

“We wore the uniform.” 

“And look where it got us.” 

“It taught us what was wrong and what was right,” Sap said. “Besides, we didn’t have much of a choice.” 

“It taught me those things. The only thing it gave you was death.”

“Your excuses are so cyclical, man!” Sap scoffed. “Stop using my death as an excuse and remember why it happened.”

“Because of my mistake.”

“Because of my choice, idiot.”

Dream didn’t want to talk about Sap being dead. “So I assume that this is your mysterious ghost way of telling me that I should trust him?”

Sap smirked at the question. “Give me some credit. I am a mysterious ghost.”

“Sapnap.” 

“Yes. But you don’t really trust people anymore so the closest I can hope for is co-conspiring king-destroyers.”

“Thanks Sap.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you practically petting him earlier though,” Sap said as an afterthought, laughing quietly. Dream glared at him.

“I take it back, you good-for-nothing omniscient bastard,” he muttered, batting in Sap’s direction. 

“ _ Your _ omniscient bastard.” Sapnap smiled.

When Dream woke up, George was sitting cross-legged on top of the bed, staring at him intently. More than anything else, it was probably a showing of peace. After all, the diamond sword resting in his lap and reflecting the sun created a spot of brightness on the wall by the man’s head.

He supposed that George had just passed his first (albeit, unintentional) test. He straightened so that the man would know he was awake, lightly resting his hand on the sword. 

He didn’t say anything when he noticed George flinch slightly at the movement.

“How’s your leg?” he asked. George stared at him. He was about to repeat the question when the man quietly answered, “Could be worse.”

Dream didn’t keep many potions around because of their fast expiration date but he tended to have one for pain-relief on hand. He dug around in the box of healing supplies on the floor and grabbed a bottle labeled with Willow’s scrawl, tossing it to the knight who caught it and held it away from his body with suspicion.

“If you don’t drink it, I will,” he said, pulling his tight shoulder above his head and stretching it until it popped. He thought that with time, it would probably improve. Probably. 

“How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?” George asked.

Dream just laughed, a dangerous throaty sound. “I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. Pain does go away without potions, you know. It just takes more time.”

George twisted the top of the bottle off and downed the liquid in one, violent gulp. He looked a little surprised with himself, possibly mulling over the idea that what he’d just drank could easily kill him. He’d just passed another test. Blind trust wasn’t always wise, but Dream would take it. 

“Believe me when I say that I wouldn’t kill you with a potion. My sword would do just fine.”

George didn’t reply, though the tension in his shoulders eased slightly as the potion took effect.

“Are you going to get started then, interrogating me?” he asked, jutting out his chin defensively while the rest of him wilted at the thought.

“No. I’m going to go get some breakfast. Do you want anything?” 

George stared at him and blinked once. Then twice. 

“This is a dream, then?” he said faintly, half stating and half asking. Dream only laughed.

“I am a dream, dude.” Silence. “Really though, that’s my name, Dream.” Nothing. He smirked. “The baked goods here are nice but there’s also soup from the mushroom harvest this week if you want.”

He was planning to ask George some questions, but he trusted Sap’s word and his stomach grumbled impatiently, demanding breakfast. Listening to Sap meant keeping both of them alive and in his mind, he’d decided the first step in that was to eat. 

He opened the door and yelled, “Don’t go outside! I’ll be back in a couple,” before it swung shut behind him. He didn’t lock it. 

He saw Bad on the way to the village center and they talked while Dream strode towards the bakery. Bad seemed to glow with pride, and Dream remembered that he’d been guarding the wall the night before. Yes, Bad told him, he’d been completely fine. No, there hadn’t been that many monsters -- Dream must have wiped out the whole cave-system when facing the horde. No, he wouldn’t mind doing it for a couple more days while Dream recovered. Everything was fine.

Dream grabbed a loaf of sweet-bread, and a large cup of soup at the village market _(you’d be surprised at what things the village guardian got for free)_ , and split off from Bad to walk home. 

When he got there, he saw that George was sitting on a chair on the porch, swinging his legs back and forth. Perfect. He didn’t really want someone who would obey every one of his orders. They were going to be a team and Dream hated dictatorships.

Without saying anything, he held the mug and the bread out towards George, waiting until he chose the bread before going inside to grab a spoon. 

_ (now that he thought about it, he only had one spoon; he needed to buy another in case they both wanted soup) _

He sat on the porch stair, facing away from George, and pushed his mask onto his forehead in order to take a bite of soup. It was delicious and he ate it in greedy, heaping spoonfuls. Judging from the silence behind him, George was doing the same thing.

“So,” he said, deciding to start right into it in case he’d misjudged the whole situation, “You want to kill the king?”

George choked and started to cough, trying to get rid of the bread stuck in his throat. Dream finished his soup and scraped the bowl with the edge of his spoon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” George said in a raspy voice when he was finally able to breathe again, unable to hide his alarm. “I serve the country of Esempi, under the Crowned King Schlatt.”

“Then you knew that the mobs would turn against you when you abandoned your post in uniform?”

“What?” 

“Every knight of the New King is told that the magic can tell when they decide to desert. It’s evil magic -- but magic all the same.” 

They stared at each other.

“So you should have known that running away without burning at least your cloak was a death-wish. Or maybe you just wanted to lead a horde to innocent villages?”

Silence.

“Unless you’re not one of Schlatt’s knights after all.”

He watched a red flush creeping up George’s neck.

“If you actually are, I’m going to kill you. But we both know you aren’t.” He slipped his mask back over his face and turned around to face the other man. “George.”

“You caught me,” George said reluctantly. “So would you mind explaining what the fuck you’re talking about?” 

“You and me,” Dream said with exaggerated slowness, pointing to himself and then to George, “We’re going to kill the king.” Then he laughed. Of course, that was the goal, but there were going to be a couple of steps in between. And an explanation. 

“Kill him?” George repeated.

“Yes,” Dream answered. “Kill him.”

“Have you forgotten who we’re talking about? Schlatt is the most dangerous and the most protected man in the country. He crushes all resistance.”

“All leaders crush resistance.”

“He hangs the bodies from the parapets, doesn’t even take them down. Eventually, they rot off the ropes,” George said, his voice cracking. It wasn’t something Dream had heard before. It sounded like George had experienced more than just rumors of the practice. 

“Then we’ll have to hang him from one, hmm?” he asked, almost sweetly, but he wasn’t really joking. He wanted Schlatt dead. 

“And how do you suggest we do that?” George asked, frowning. “You haven’t even asked who I am and I haven’t seen your face. We’re two strangers against a nation.”

“Does it matter, who you are?” Dream asked with an air of nonchalance that he hoped was convincing. He knew that George was hiding something but so was he. 

“No,” George responded quickly.

“Good. Then it doesn’t matter who I am either,” he leaned towards George. “As for the assassination, I’ve collected a couple of favors over the years. And you don’t need to know who I am but know that I’m a somebody.”

A sad smile spread across George’s face. “I was a somebody, once.”

“Don’t steal my moment,” Dream grumbled, voice tinged with jest though George’s statement was telling. Patience, he told himself. He would figure out the soldier’s identity soon enough.

“Why are you doing this now?” George asked, breaking the silence. “Schlatt has ruled unopposed since the Old Kingdom fell years ago.” 

“Don’t think that I’m the hero type or anything. I just want to keep my village safe and Schlatt’s monsters are more desperate than ever.”

“Will killing him stop them?”

“The same way that the leaves of a tree die when you crush its roots.”

“So why should I help you at all? Killing a ruler, even an awful one, could destroy the whole nation,” George said, staring out into the trees instead of Dream.

“Why do you care about Esempi? What has it given to you but near-death?”

“It gave me hope, once.”

Dream scoffed at that. 

“Hope is fleeting. A good friend once told me that the only language everyone spoke was violence. Many don’t even know the tongue of hope, the dialect of peace.”

“People can learn new languages. They can be taught.” 

“And who will teach them?” Dream said after a pause. His head spun with the layers of metaphors woven around them.

“Me,” George answered, quietly but without doubt.

“You want to be the king? For what? Power?”

“I don’t quite trust you so you’ll have to earn the answer. That’s what I want in return for helping you kill Schlatt.”

It was laughable really, a soldier demanding leadership of one of the most powerful countries in the world without the experience for it -- but he had seemed so confident in his answer. And Dream didn’t care much of the world outside of his village anyway, let George destroy it with incompetence if he so desired.

“Fine,” Dream grumbled.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, George. If we kill Schlatt, I’ll put his crown on your head myself.”

Maybe this wasn’t quite what he’d planned from the beginning, but he would work with what he could get.

They would kill the New King and there would be no more obligation, no more guilt.

They would kill the New King and he would be free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! if you have any questions or feedback, feel free to drop into the comments! I love hearing from readers (:

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm a high school student so I won't have the most consistent update schedule but I do have a plan for this fic and it won't be abandoned.


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